Through this holiday season, Radio World NewsBytes features special roundups of the best of our year's editorial coverage. Today: Radio World Engineering Extra is a special "deep dive" for technologists, published six times a year; here are some of the best articles that appeared in its pages in 2014.
IP Audio Takes a Big Step Forward (February)
A new AES standard will help guide development of audio over Internet protocol for the professional and broadcast industries. Michael LeClair wrote, "We live in a world that is moving quickly toward integrating new products and services across networks that span all pre-existing technologies. It's an exciting time for audio. In 10 years, it is likely that virtually all new equipment will be networkable and capable of greater performance precisely for this reason." Don't Forget Those Recertification Measurements! (February)
Radio World is fortunate to have an exceptional family of engineering leaders among our editors and contributors. Longtime colleague Cris Alexander is one. In this article he wrote that biennial sample system recertification tends to fall off the radar for a lot of managers. Underground Transmitter Site Finds Niche (April)
Davide Moro showed us the Plan de Corones transmitting site, situated on a mountain plateau in the Italian province of South Tyrol in the Alps. Great pix! A New Way to Monitor Signal Level (April)
John Kean, senior technologist at NPR Labs, wrote about one of the most fundamental changes to occur in audio metering since the introduction of peak metering nearly two decades ago. "It is also a major departure from signal peak metering, which is so common today, as well as the historic VU meter — a change that some believe will resolve long-standing issues with irregular program levels and listener annoyance." Field Observations of Elevated FM HD Radio (June)
Expanding on a presentation at the spring NAB Show, Alan Jurison wrote that the time has come for more research and discussion about –10 dBc digital operation. "Let us also start a dialog on how we can perhaps devise some relaxation in the rules to allow for some meaningful power increases in the super-powered-heavy markets of Los Angeles and San Francisco, or at least start to level the playing field for those grandfathered stations, which are now suddenly far less competitive than some of their other in-market peer stations." A New Twist on Wireless IP Remote Broadcasts: RPUoIP (June)
Rick Walsh, market engineering manager for iHeartMedia, came up with a nontraditional way to support remote broadcasts with digital connectivity. "Management appreciates the no-expense airtime for this connectivity. Engineering appreciates the independent nature of the connectivity — not at the mercy of the cell carriers — particularly in times of disaster. Everyone appreciates the smallness of deployed hardware." | 
